Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@qoto.org

I'm not saying there's no such thing as software bloat (there is) but the reason that your computer magically always seems to use 80-90% of the ram no matter how much ram you install is that the computer understands empty ram doesn't do anything but ram being used to cache files makes your user experience much faster

this is a good thing! if your computer stopped doing this everything would suddenly feel very sluggish and stuttery!

something gives me the sneaking suspicion there's been some controversy over spelling at the #Wikipedia article on Beetlejuice

The thing about #tech #layoffs that people who haven’t been through it often don’t understand is that morale never recovers. The employees who remain will never have the same relationship with that company, bosses or peers.

Watching people you respect pack their stuff and crying on the phone with their spouses is something that never goes away. When I survived a layoff in my 20s I became a “do exactly what the ticket says” person. I stopped suggesting ideas, providing feedback, believing anything a manager told me.

If you are a company considering layoffs, especially a profitable company, you should approach it as “this department will have 100% turnover”. The second I got another job offer I left that company and six months later nobody who had been there at the time of layoffs remained.

I’ve seen that pattern play out multiple times.

I saw this online somewhere and I just had to recreate it. This is my coding happy place.

I can’t speak to other countries but the US literally elected a rapist as president (potentially twice) and is banning abortion in multiple states along with other anti-women policies.

This trend is like the ground being wet after it has rained.

Real story here is that a passenger got paranoid and caused himself and all his fellow passengers unnecessary delay. With knock on effects, no doubt.
Good work fella!
https://www.unilad.com/news/us-news/virgin-atlantic-flight-canceled-missing-bolts-wing-777642-20240123

When I was a smartass computer nerd in the 80s and 90s, an eternal theme was people asking me for tech support help and me having to slowly, patiently explain to them that computers aren't scary, they're actually predictable, they won't explode or erase your data (unless you really make an effort), and they operate by simple (if somewhat arcane) rules. Edit > Cut, then click, then Edit > Paste. Save As. Use tabs, not spaces. Stuff like that. Maybe not easy, but simple, or at least consistent and learnable.

But that's not true anymore.

User interfaces lag. Text lies. Buttons don't click. Buttons don't even look like buttons! Panels pop up and obscure your workspace and you can't move or remove them -- a tiny floating x and a few horizontal lines is all you get. Mobile and web apps lose your draft text, refresh at whim, silently swallow errors, mysteriously move shit around when you're not looking, hide menus, bury options, don't respect or don't remember your chosen settings. Doing the same thing gives different results. The carefully researched PARC principles of human-computer interaction -- feedback, discoverabilty, affordances, consistency, personalization -- all that fundamental Don Norman shit -- have been completely discarded.

My tech support calls now are about me sadly explaining there's nothing I can do. Computers suck now. They run on superstition, not science. It's a real tragedy for humanity and I have no idea how to fix it.

#HCI #UX #UI #okdoomer

The issue is that these developers wanted one thing (lower fees), but lobbied for “freedom of stores” and “external payment systems”

They got what they asked for, which is not what they wanted.

What’s happening between Texas and the U.S. is batshit crazy and again proves that a bunch of Americans would rather die in a civil war than share anything with a person of color.